F1 Las Vegas GP preview: Mercedes eyes surprise win as Verstappen nears coronation

LAS VEGAS — All eyes may be on Max Verstappen and Lando Norris come Saturday evening, with the two championship contenders lining up side-by-side for the Las Vegas Grand Prix, but they won’t be on the front row (or even among the top four).

George Russell secured pole after showing impressive pace in the cold temperatures throughout practice. Carlos Sainz will start alongside him, on a track where Ferrari is expected to fare well compared to next weekend in Qatar. Pierre Gasly shocked the Formula One world by qualifying third, a few weeks after Alpine secured a double podium, and Charles Leclerc will slide into the grid spot next to his close friend. Ferrari could be poised to take a chunk out of McLaren’s championship lead if it can stay within the top four realm and keep McLaren at bay.

Verstappen and Norris make up the third row, and Oscar Piastri is behind his teammate, after qualifying eighth. The Dutchman needs to finish ahead of the Briton to clinch his fourth consecutive world championship. But if Norris outscores Verstappen by three points, the title fight will extend to Qatar, which is a sprint race weekend. The Dutchman won his last championship on a sprint Saturday.

“Tomorrow everything changes,” Sainz said. “Everyone will be running on grained tires, on high fuel, a very different situation as today. It will be everything open again.”

There’s plenty to play for under the dazzling lights of the Las Vegas Strip. Here are the storylines we’re watching heading into the Saturday evening race.

Can Russell continue Mercedes’ head-scratching success and win in Vegas?

The trend of Mercedes’ recent form has seen it typically peak in practice on Friday before its rivals pull clear when it matters in qualifying and the race, leaving Russell and Lewis Hamilton struggling to compete at the very front.

That naturally bred skepticism when Hamilton topped both FP1 and FP2 on Thursday, and the result was even surprising for Mercedes. But as Russell led FP3, it became clear the team was in the thick of the fight for pole.

Russell got the job done when it mattered. A glance of the wall on his first run in Q3 required a change of front wing, but Mercedes turned his car around quickly enough to allow for a stellar final lap. Russell had been clear to the team he wanted to leave it late to set a time, noting the sizeable amount of track evolution and added grip in the low track temperatures. Being the final man across the line helped him secure pole by almost one-tenth of a second.

Mercedes hasn’t finished on the podium since Baku, making its sudden surge in Las Vegas a surprise — even to Russell.

“It’s been a real surprise for all of us, and it’s something that we need to really review because this is an outlier circuit,” he said. “We haven’t done anything out of the ordinary specifically for Vegas. But for whatever reason, the conditions, the layout is playing in our favor. And I’m kind of scratching my head as to why.”

With teammate Hamilton starting down in P10 after making mistakes on both of his Q3 laps, Mercedes’ hopes of a return to the podium rest largely with Russell. He won earlier this year in Austria after Verstappen and Norris clashed, but now has a chance to try to control from the front.

Russell thought the race would be difficult, noting the high amount of graining teams have experienced on the soft and medium tires through practice. While he thought the hards would prove more resilient, he noted how no driver had run them yet this weekend.

“We’re going to be learning on the fly,” Russell said. “It’s probably going to be surviving that first stint and going from there. Here in Vegas, anything can happen. It’s a long race. There was an untimely safety car for a lot of people last year, and we also saw that in the last race in Brazil.

“Right now, I’m very happy, very satisfied, but I’m not taking anything for granted going into tomorrow.” – Luke Smith

Norris shifts focus away from title battle as chances slip

Norris was already well aware his championship hopes were borderline extinct when he entered qualifying at Las Vegas. And after taking the sixth starting position — one spot behind championship leader Verstappen, who Norris trails by 62 points — the McLaren driver sounded as if he was no longer stressing over the title race. He needs to outscore Verstappen by three points to keep the championship alive to Qatar.

“Whether he wins or not (on Saturday), for me it’s not going to change anything,” Norris said, his tone the embodiment of a shrug emoji. “He’s pretty likely to win the championship. I’m here to race and do my best in every single race I can, whether Max finishes ahead or not. That’s life.”

Norris seemed resigned to the chill-induced low grip conditions that don’t suit the characteristic of McLaren’s car — thus requiring the team’s two drivers to race precisely on the limit if they want to be quick.

That challenge was simply too difficult to overcome on Friday night, he added, and Norris didn’t anticipate much change for the race.

Still, Las Vegas doesn’t exactly suit Red Bull’s car, either. Verstappen forced a smile while saying his car lost time “in the corners and on the straights” — also known as everywhere — with the blame placed on Red Bull’s wing.

“We know that with our wing actually you lose top speed, especially with DRS open,” Verstappen said. “It’s a bit of a handicap. That’s something of course we have to deal with on a track like this, a track like Monza.”

Verstappen was pleased to have picked up some time between Thursday’s practices and Friday’s sessions, but said his car was “still too slow.”

“But more than half of that is already just on the straights,” he said. “That is something where there’s nothing you can do.”

Of course, Norris isn’t ignorant of Red Bull’s issues and noted there was a chance to keep his title hopes alive with a good result (which would entail gaining three or more points on his championship rival).

“He’s only just ahead of us today,” Norris said. “We have a chance to beat them tomorrow. But I’ll go out and do my best like I do in every single race. And whatever the outcome is, the outcome is.” — Jeff Gluck

Why Las Vegas is a must-maximize weekend for Ferrari

There are just three races to go in the 2024 season, and there is still a constructors’ championship up for grabs. McLaren leads the 10 teams with 593 points, and Ferrari sits second, 36 points behind the Woking-based crew. The Prancing Horse could close the gap to McLaren, considering how both Ferrari drivers qualified ahead of the McLaren duo on Friday in Las Vegas.

“At one point, I thought I had pole position because I thought I was one of the last ones to cross the line,” Sainz said, “but then suddenly they told me that George was coming.”

The Spaniard admitted that second likely was the maximum on Friday, given Mercedes’ pace during the practice sessions. Russell and Hamilton were topping the timesheets. But Sainz was only a tenth off of Russell’s pole time. The Ferrari driver said, “I think when you see our gap to McLaren and Red Bull, we outqualified them, and we were stronger than the two teams that we’ve been fighting recently. But suddenly there’s been a new invite to the party.”

Looking ahead to Saturday evening’s race, Sainz reckons they will have the pace to fight for the win and isn’t ruling out Russell’s presence. It’ll be a matter of controlling the tire graining, a topic that came up in multiple post-qualifying interviews. Ferrari needs to bring home a big points haul, not just because of the 36-point gap to McLaren but also because Sainz does not anticipate Qatar will be a strong outing for the team. There are specific corner types where Ferrari struggles, and a big haul in Las Vegas could offset the loss Sainz anticipates next weekend.

“I’m a bit worried about Qatar because if you see Turn 1 and Turn 3, it’s exactly the type of corner that you have in Qatar,” Sainz said. “Fourth, fifth gear, long combined which is exactly where we’ve been struggling, and just in that sector today to the Mercedes, we were three-tenths off. If you keep adding those corners up, it will be a tough one for us in Qatar.

“So tomorrow is a good opportunity to get points because we might lose them in Qatar.” — Madeline Coleman 

Gasly’s third-place start is critical in the constructors’ fight

Last time out, in Brazil, Gasly and Esteban Ocon secured a double podium finish that launched Alpine from ninth in the standings ahead of Williams, Haas and RB, straight into a three-point lead for sixth place. Millions of dollars separate the constructor standings, and it makes a big difference in car and team development.

Brazil was a rather unusual race, and Alpine took advantage of the tricky conditions. But was it a fluke? The team had only scored 14 points across the first 20 rounds before that whopping 35-point gain in Brazil. Gasly’s run to third in qualifying in Las Vegas, again, shows Alpine is a points-scoring threat.

“I’d say it’s more concerning to have an Alpine in front of all of us, to be honest,” McLaren’s Piastri said after qualifying. “Clearly, Gasly has been quick the last few weekends now. I think that’s three or four weekends in a row where he’s been very quick in quali.”

Alpine chose an aggressive downforce package, opting for little downforce and maximizing straight-line, Gasly said. This will impact how the car performs in the corners. He added, “It’s a challenging track, it’s very cold conditions, it’s quite an outlier in the season.”

Although Gasly is surrounded by the top dogs, his mind is on the battle for P6 in the constructors’ standings. He needs to finish ahead of Haas and RB. He said, “Whatever happened in that quali is amazing, it feels good to be in front of Max and McLaren and these guys. But at the end of the day, it’s not our fight. We’ll give our best shot tomorrow.”  — Madeline Coleman

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Another crash sets Williams back, awaiting update on Colapinto

Williams went to significant lengths to get its cars repaired ahead of the Las Vegas Grand Prix after Alex Albon and Franco Colapinto both had big crashes in Brazil, running the damage bill into the millions of dollars.

So to see Franco Colapinto crash heavily in Q2 after clipping the inside wall at Turn 16 would have been a big blow for the entire team.

The priority, of course, is Colapinto’s health. The Argentine got out of his car unaided and was taken to the medical center for a check-up. According to Williams, the crash recorded a force of 50G and was visibly so forceful that it pushed the barrier back, leading to a delay in qualifying.

“An impact of this magnitude is obviously significant and severe and he will need to be evaluated again tomorrow before we will know whether he is clear to race,” Williams said in a statement. “Franco’s health is all that matters and we are glad he is otherwise OK. We will provide further updates when we can.”

Williams could only enter one car to the race in Brazil after Albon’s big crash in Q3. The team has a big repair job to complete with Colapinto’s car, which sustained a large front impact, and there will also be the question mark over his fitness. – Luke Smith

After a difficult day for the team in Las Vegas, James provides an update on Franco. pic.twitter.com/pMyx6gbMsd

— Williams Racing (@WilliamsRacing) November 23, 2024

Another week, another bitterly disappointing qualifying session for Pérez

As Red Bull struggles to stay in the constructors’ championship battle, Pérez has continued to start his weekends on the back foot. This time, Pérez only managed to qualify 16th for the Las Vegas race — the sixth time this season he has failed to advance past Q1.

Since Monaco in May, Pérez now has as many Q1 eliminations as he has top-10 starts (six).

“Well, it’s obviously not ideal,” Pérez told reporters after the session. “You want to be up there, especially (when) I know what I can do. But when you don’t have that grip underneath you, then it’s really hard, and you’re prone to a lot of mistakes and so on.”

As Red Bull has lost some pace, Pérez’s qualifying results have plummeted. He has not started better than the fifth row since Baku in mid-September.

“I think we’ve got a fundamental issue at the moment with the car that is just not working for me,” he said. “… We come to the weekends and we just explore a lot of things, and it’s just a difficult one to make it work.” — Jeff Gluck

(Top photos of George Russell and Max Verstappen: Sipa USA,  Chris Graythen / Getty Images)